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Latest Version: 9.0.9.0

Affino 9.0.9 - The Speed Update

19 May 202517:14

Markus Karlsson

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Affino gets another speed boost

Affino is already twice as fast as it was a year ago, now it's getting even faster

Affino adds support for OpenAI 4.1 API for improved AI automation workflows

This update is focused on delivering on the Need for Speed. The average response time is twice as fast now as it was a year ago, and this release sees further speed updates of up to 50% for a number of tasks. This is because we are moving Affino SaaS to the latest generation tech platforms, which promise considerable performance gains. Not every task will be faster, but the net benefits of a faster, more secure environment will benefit everyone.

Affino’s handling of cached content also sees a significant evolution. For the first time it is possible to set individual caching timeframes for guest visitors and bots, providing more granular control over the duration time that pages are cached and delivered to your audience. This is both on your overall instance, and on a per channel basis.

This gives you the best of both worlds and will result in both improved SEO, and the average page speed time rising across the board, given that bots often make up to 95% of the traffic hitting your site. Altogether there are over 110 performance and usability updates in this release, and significant optimisations which come from updating to this release on the latest tech stack.

There is also an updated AI prompt engine and support for OpenAI ChatGPT 4.1, which is a significant step forward for AI automation consistency and performance.

Notice - Contact the Affino Team to schedule in an infrastructure update for your Affino instance, so that you can update to this Affino release (you will only be able to update when your Affino instance is running on the latest tech stack). There will be limited QA windows for the release testing, so make sure that this is tightly coordinated with the Affino Team.

Upgrade Guidance

It is important to liaise with the support team to schedule an update window where they can be on hand to support the update.

Run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the sequence of the system and design updates laid out on the Control > Update screen.

Note - make sure you clear your Browser Cache to see the latest version of the Affino Control Centre.

Key Features

Guest and Bot Cache Timeframes

This patch introduces a major enhancement to our caching engine, allowing for more precise control over how content is cached for different users. You can now set separate caching durations for guest users and known bots. This means guest visitors will see fresher content, while bots can be served pages cached for longer periods—helping to reduce server load and improve performance.

These caching settings are applied on the Zone and can also be applied at the Channel level, giving you more granular control over content delivery. For example, you might choose to cache breaking news stories less frequently, while long-form or evergreen content—like insight pieces—can remain cached for longer durations.

To make the most of this feature and to ensure you have the fastest page times, simply go to your Zone and Channel settings and set the caching to match your content.

So you might for example set daily bot cache refreshes, this guarantees the fastest and lowest cost page delivery times to bots whilst having the guest cache refreshed every hour. You can set your news channel to refresh every ten minutes for guests and every 20 minutes for bots, or even every 10 minutes.

Performance and Security Updates

This release includes a number of important performance and security enhancements. It is also an essential update for compatibility with Affino’s latest tech stack. We are seeing significant performance improvements when running Affino with this newest release on the latest architecture, so schedule in your update at the earliest opportunity.

Updated AI Prompting and OpenAI ChatGPT 4.1 Support

OpenAI released ChatGPT 4.1, its first LLM which is specifically engineered for APIs, and offers significant benefits for the Affino community. OpenAI also provided new prompting guidance and we have updated the core Affino engine to better support the latest prompting techniques.

The most significant benefit is that when using GPT 4.1 it now better follows your prompts, and there is less requirement to reinforce each statement you make. There is also less need to review continuously how the LLM interprets your prompts. GPT 4.1 also has a much larger context window, meaning it can process more information at once. Since these benefits are so significant compared to GTP 4.0 we have simply swapped the two (and removed support for 4.0) so that everyone gets immediate benefits. Note that it is essential that you review your System Roles as they can now be both simultaneously simpler and more powerful.

Fixes and Minor Enhancements

Fixes address elements that didn’t function as expected and have now been improved for better performance. Minor enhancements provide subtle refinements—most users won’t notice them, but some will appreciate them—contributing to an overall smoother Affino experience.

Additionally, we proactively monitor and resolve low-level errors in the background to prevent disruptions and maintain platform stability. On the display side, we continuously update CSS and JavaScript to ensure compatibility with the latest changes in all major web browsers.

Contacts - add a horizontal scrollbar for tables where the columns exceed the width of the browser.

Content Subscriptions - fixed an encoding issue with email addresses.

Control Centre - added links to title and view columns on My Content.

Exports - fixed an issue with the export software library outputting zeroes instead of null values.

Media - fixed an issue still displaying views despite de-selecting this option.

Message Storage Time Frame - fixed a scheduled task issue not deleting all the messages outside the set time frame.

My Profile - fixed an encoding issue with telephone numbers on Other Addresses

My Content - you can now more easily navigate to your content and see the number of views directly on your My Content screen

Order - Updated the PaymentMethodType metadata to include more granular details, e.g. ‘google_pay’ instead of just ‘card’. Also fixed an issue where the refund was calculated incorrectly.

Outgoing Feeds - removed the ‘preview=1’ parameter from the Feed URL and added a copy button. Also moved this button to the top to improve usability.

Payment Screen - removed the text element, ‘Your card will be immediately charged…’ from the payment screen since this no longer applies with the newly added Stripe payment options.

Pro Forma Orders - we no longer display the Take Payment and Send Payment Link buttons for orders that do not have the Stripe or GoCardless (Payment Gateways) selected.

SEO - improved the meta data to instruct bots to not follow, index and archive content when you wish them to ignore part of your sites, or indeed entire sites like staging sites.

Sitemap - the URLs have been updated to all be https, previously were set at http in the sitemap. In practice they were all encrypted, but now everything is consistent

Stripe Payment Gateway - we no longer display the ‘Test Security Group’ and ‘Switch to Payment Element’ settings for new Stripe Payment Gateways as this will use the Payment Element API.